Deatling with Craftworlder's wraightguard Deathstar

There will be a 1850 points tournament in our local club soon and I saw a guy testing his roster with retarded amount of Spiritseers, wraightguards, Eldrad and so on.
He took the Iyanden supplement with 5 Spiritseers, put some of them into 10 wraightguards, aded Eldrad there and a Tau Commander in battlesuit (maybe it was a named character I don't know).
Besides he took 3 waveserpents with dire avengers, some kroots, riptide and a Farseer (or similarly female looking named character from supplement).
I have no idea how to with all these psykers and the deathstar unit under Fortune in case in I meat them on tourney.
I run a beastpack (Baron, jetseer), some reavers, 4 venoms and so on (here is the roster I plan http://www.thedarkcity.net/t8327-1850-list-for-tournament).

I suppose all my transports will fall during the first shooting (3 serpents shields, riptide and some nasty tricks perhaps). If the wraithguards will be under fortune - it has no sense to shoot at them with Venoms (if some of them will be still alive). If I charge them, that will give me just a turn or 2 - I don't think my beasts will be effective against buffed wraiths with all possible rerolls.

What would you recommend?

He seems to have rather a lot of HQ choices for an 1850 army! 5 Spiritseers is a single HQ but you also mention Eldrad and another Farseer plus a Tau Commander. How is he managing all this?

I was also surprised, but he said - everything is ok. It comes from supplement. It is hard to check for me, I'm not an Eldar specialist, especially with all these damned add-ons

I'd ask him to show you the relevant codex/supplement. There's nothing in the Iyanden supplement that enables him to take extra HQ slots. The only thing he can do is take 1-5 Spiritseers as a single HQ choice. It's also a bit cheeky to use the Iyanden supplement and take Eldrad as he's not from Iyanden! It's not technically against the rules but it's far from fluffy.

If even he drops one HQ, it won't make the situation significantly better. I also suppose that this extra character was one of the 5 Spiritseers.
That guy has made special cards for psychic power of each character. Three columns for psychic schools, and 6 lines for powers. Each card has a picture of the Character and each one was in a plastic laminate, so he could make a note with a marker, which powers has a character, and then erase it from the card after the game. Very clever.
Well, he had 6 cards - 4 with spiritseers, one with Eldrad and one more with unknown character on it.
And what about the fluff - who cares of it on tournaments?

The extra character could be very important as it reduces the chances of getting Fortune on his Death Star unit. Spiritseers cannot roll on Runes of Fate so they can't get Fortune. Only Eldrad/Farseers can get it. Without that, his Wraithguard are no harder to kill than Marines and you can go to town on them with Venoms and other splinter weaponry.

Best bet is probably to get into close combat with his death star. Your beastpack should have no problems wiping them out if they can survive long enough to get into assault.

With the full 5 spirit seers (sounds like the 5th mystery guy is just a seer) the chances of the WG unit having a 2+ save are high, add in eldrad and fortune is also a good chance... Even without it a 2+ armour save makes them tough - infact, a venom with 2 cannons goes from 1.3 dead WG to 0.6 dead WG... so you need twice as many shots... plus the characters have 2 wounds each to tank with... and should they get fortune... well that sucks.

That said, grab a crucible of malediction and watch them squirm - with LD 9 you should get at least 1 seer with it.

I would also not advise the beast pack engage the death star - you will loose. They are fearless, likely with a 2+ save and then can tank the razor wing rends on the multi wound spirit seers. Then they can run you down with ease... they will be wounding on 2+ with all their attacks and with the other buffs from the seers its likely to be a loosing battle. That said, with the shard in your list being run down is not a factor unless they get terrify...

The good news is that they won't have conceal as the iyanden book removes it from the powers a spirit seer can access in favour of a new primaris which gives battle focus and furious charge.

This means that dark matter (lances/disintegrators) will have a field day with them - so spam them with fire from the blasters, ravagers and so on. If he tanks with the seers they will likely loose a lot of the buffs but if he takes it on the WG then the unit drops in effectiveness.

Also, I am assuming these WG have the stock weapon and not the D-scythe. If they do - charging them is even more suicidal.

Lastly, I call shenanigans on the list. Its well over 1850 based on my basic maths - the WG with eldrad, 5 seers and a buff commander are almost certainly over 1000 points (pending upgrades) while the 3 serpents are going to close on (if not more than) 600 points. Add a rip tide plus kroot and I call that an over points value list.

disintegrator cannons ftw. massed poison ftw. there are some one shot weapons which could be handy against that huge volume of psykers (never used them myself though)

yeah my 1850 wraith army is basically:
HQ
-spiritseer

Troops
-10 wguard on foot with cannons
-5 wguard in serpent with flamers
-10 avengers in serpent
-5 rangers
-5 rangers

Fast
-5 spiders

Heavy
-wraithlord, dual BL + sword
-wraithlord, dual Sl + sword
-wraithknight, sunncanon + SL
you really dont get much to play with when you go with wguard + serpents. make sure you see his official list and the maths.

You could always ignore it and kill everything else. One of the problems with deathstars is for all the investment they can still often only kill one unit a turn, if that. In this case the unit looks slow and short ranged.. am I missing something? If not take night shields kill the rest then decide what to do about that unit. Thou could kite it with something cheap until he catches on too. Lastly winning combat isn't always necessary, if you need to engage make it something that can tarpit (khymerae w rerolls etc) and put some grisly trophies nearby. A detailed breakdown of his list would help with suggestions if you can get one.

I used wraithguard/lords a lot in my eldar lists, his list is slightly... odd, only the Eldar parts you mentioned there are something like 1450pts assuming 5man DA squads, no Farseer and no upgrades anywhere, being completely unfamiliar with tau I'll just assume he takes those tau without any upgrades and minimal squads meaning the things you mention here adds up to roughly 1775pts (+-20pts). Have a good look at his list and make sure it's <= 1850pts when you play him. There is no way he has Eldrad, Farseer AND 5 Spiritseers, those are 3 HQ choices and considering the Tau allies, he can't have CWE allied with Illyanden.

Personally I don't like footslogging guards and they are deceptively fragile with the Ilyanden supplement as they loose Conceal/Reveal. Make sure he doesn't have this, his Wraithguards should have Battle Focus + Furios Charge NOT Shrouded! This means they are wounded on a 2+ by Dark Lances and get no save unless you sticks them in area terrian which will slow the already tardy deathstar even more, he could potentially use the Seers and Eldrad to tank for the Guards with their 4++/3++ reroll (if he manages to get fortune on Eldrad which is roughly a 66% chance), but the threat of ID from Lances will probably discourage him as each dead psyker means the deathstar uses alot of it utility. I suppose Eldrad could have Fortune and Forewarning (4++ rerollable for the entire unit) if he gets lucky on his power rolls but chances of that aren't that high and seems like a really bad idea to rely upon.

Cannon Guards have very short range, only 1 shot each at 12", and D-scythe (which cost an extra 10 ppm) are template weapons, nightshields will seriously screw them over. I really think you could without too much issue avoid the deathstar, and if all else fails considering they have 1 attack each at S5 in melee you could potentially just throw your wyches at them which should tie them up for a few turns and unless they have D-scythes overwatch shouldn't be too horrible. Also remember all guards in a unit have to have the same weapon, so no 5 cannons/5d-scythes is possible and considering the base point cost on everything you mentioned I don't think he'd have the points to give them all D-scythes (an extra 100pts). Funny fact, if you have some Warriors (or another T3 unit) in a ruin the 10 cannons will only kill ~3 warriors, or if he has guide on them, doom and misfortune on you roughly 6½, at the very worst he has prescience and perfect timing on them and doom on you which bumps it up to 8-9 dead warriors. Cannon guards are only really dangerous if you have some super expensive, non-numerous 'deathstar' unit of your own.

If he's going for the old wraith-wall tactic he's doing it wrong, the normal way was as many 5-man groups of Guards as possible with enough psykers around to not worry about wraithsight (which is gone in the new codex) which can be quite potent. His deathstar assuming all 10 guards are one unit is just... bad. The unit (if all 5 seers and Eldrad go into it, which they probably shouldn't) is 875pts if he has no special gear on the Spiritseers. I really think he should split them in 2 groups but then Eldrad looses abit of his utility.

tl:dr, Don't worry about the Wraithguards (who should NOT HAVE SHROUDED), they're slow can only shoot 1 thing at a time just avoid them and focus your fire on his Wave Serpents or Riptide. If all else fails throw your wyches at them or shoot them with lances which they will be sadly weak to.

Thanks guys, now I see it's not as scary as it seems. Moreover the mentioned list seems to be for about 2000 points.
These guys are not so troublesome as the Necron teleporting deathstar with Lord, Obyron, Chronomentron and 10 immortals.

On the subject of Wave Serpents trashing your transports;

The chance of a vehicle surviving a weapon firing N shots with the chance P_glance of causing a hullpoint (i.e. glance or pen) and the chance P_pen causing an explosion (i.e. getting a pen and then rolling enough to explode the vehicle) can be expressed as,



where the first term is the chance of your vehicle not getting wrecked and the second not exploding, for your vehicle to still be alive in the end neither needs to happen. Multiple immobilised results are ignored in this calculation because it's hard. Also note that this is for a single kind of weapon, but could be modified to include several different kinds however this requires me to think which I can not be bothered with right now.

Now, onto the Wave Serpent; lets assume the serpent instead of firing 4 S6 (scatter laser) shots and ~4.5 (d6+1) S7 with ignores cover (serpent shield) at BS4, fires 7 S7 twinlinked shots with ignores cover at BS4 (i.e. very much nastier than an actual Wave Serpent, or an incredibly lucky serpent shield roll) to get a general feeling for the dangers of leaving your transports out in the open. We in the end find that the Serpent has a 94% chance of destroying your raider or a 92% chance of destroying your venoms, for the interested this also results in a 77% chance to kill a rhino.

EDIT: My friend who is less lazy than me decided to do the more accurate calculation with a TL scatter laser and 4 TL shield shots and got the follow results 45%, 66%, 82% for the rhino, raider and venom respectivley. I haven't had the energy to double check his results, but he is sometimes trustworthy.

EDIT2: Apperently he is not as trustworthy as I might have led you to believe, he forgot the include the case of the scatter laser doing 1 HP and the shield doing 2 which would also wreck the vehicles, so his numbers are alot lower than the actual chances.

crap's crazy yo

Science, bitch! (c)   
Wave serpents destroying my transports is the main issue here. They will get rid of every skimmers in couple of turns and then the deatstar will approach and erase everything in close range.

But this can happen in every Eldar list with wave serpents, so nothing unusual.

smashed a tau friend with mass poison/S8
max splinterborn in venoms
warriors with SC in raiders
scourges/bikes
max ravagers, cant go wrong ;)venoms and ravagers with NS